Manus despair: 'He was guilty of nothing'

Amid an outpouring of grief at a mosque in the dusty southern suburbs of Tehran, relatives of Iranian asylum seeker Reza Barati added chilling new detail to the moments he was clubbed to death on Manus Island.

Speaking after a memorial service, his brother-in-law, Taleb Ghanbaria, said Mr Barati was not among the detainees protesting at the island's detention centre on February 17.

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'Saddam Hussein didn't treat us as badly'

Anger mixed with grief as the family of asylum seeker Reza Barati, who died on Manus island in Australian custody, mourn their loved one.

Quoting another island detainee, a cousin of Mr Barati who phoned him after the violence subsided, Mr Ghanbaria told Fairfax Media the two men had been in the centre's computer room when they heard a commotion.

''When Reza opened the door and put his head out to look, someone pulled him out and started hitting him on the head. His cousin watched it all,'' Mr Ghanbaria said.

Men gather in front of a large photo of killed asylum seeker Reza Barati during the memorial service, held at the Al-Mahdi mosque in the Nabard neighbourhood in South East Tehran, Iran. Photo: kate geraghty

Flowers flanked an image of 23-year-old Mr Barati, a more gentle portrait than the single image that predominates in Australian media reports of the controversy surrounding his death.

Dozens of members of the wider Barati family lined up to receive condolences as mourners passed through the mosque. The dead man's distraught sister, Kowsar, was unable to stand during the service, and later had to be helped as she left the mosque.

Koranic chants reverberated from the marbled walls before a prayer leader announced he was speaking on behalf of Mr Barati's absent father - who was to attend a home-town memorial on Friday in Sirvan, a cluster of mountain villages close to Iran's border with Iraq.

Family members said as many as a dozen Sirvan locals were in detention on Manus Island.

One of the mourners was 23-year-old Abuozar Heydari, who last year volunteered to be repatriated to Iran after 16 days on Manus Island from one of the earliest boatloads of asylum seekers sent to the detention centre.

The prayer leader continued to speak for the father: ''I wish I can have my son back from Australia … It's difficult to be alone in a foreign country and to be treated that way.''

He then addressed the portrait of Mr Barati - ''and your sister wishes to see your wedding ceremony, but you are gone; you died in a sad way.''

Mourners fleshed out the profile of a man about whom Australians know little, except that as a client of people smugglers he wound up on Manus Island where his death has become a flashpoint in the tortured politics of Australia's immigration policy.

Mr Ghanbaria spoke fondly of the dead man - ''he was strong, but never aggressive; humble''.

Mr Barati had graduated as an architect but had been unable to find work in Iran's sanction-strapped economy, the brother-in-law said. He had set out for Australia hoping to further his architectural studies.

An uncle, the father of the cousin who had witnessed Mr Barati's death, said his son had told him Mr Barati had volunteered to teach other detainees in the use of computers.

He added: ''Is it fair for a well-educated refugee, an intelligent boy, to be killed? For what - he was innocent, guilty of nothing? Is it Australian human rights to treat someone this way?''

Another cousin compared Mr Barati's death with that of blogger Sattar Beheshti, whose death in Iranian detention in 2012 provoked an international outcry against Tehran. ''Human rights people around the world demanded answers from the Iranian government, but where were they when this young man died in an Australian camp?'' the cousin said

Mr Ghanbaria said he had told Australian diplomats and the Iranian Foreign Ministry that he would pursue any avenues under international law to have his family compensated for Mr Barati's death - ''whatever the law says is what we are entitled to''.

''Is it justifiable when you get into someone's house as a refugee and you get killed?''